


Philharmonie

by jazzjo



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Orchestra, F/F, I hope it's a thing, is that a thing?, orchestra AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-09-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 10:24:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1937310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzjo/pseuds/jazzjo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A French import into the orchestra throws the hornist for a loop, and maybe she is finally figure out where the music is leading to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> Hallo!  
> This is my first attempt at fanfiction for Orphan Black and I do hope you like it! Feedback, of course, is always appreciated and I hope my weird idea that struck me makes some sense to others. It's a little short, for now, while I see how this goes and while I prepare for a performance that's real soon. If y'all like it I'll try my best to make each chapter longer. Enjoy (hopefully)!

There’s only so much the lower hornist can do to keep her composure and her tone during her warm-ups while she watches this new member of the orchestra astound the rest of them with her rendition of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1. Her hazel eyes were slipped shut, lithe frame embracing her instrument as her blonde curls danced with her delicate and strong fingers surely across the fingerboard. The lilting lines and deep warm low tones of the Allemande were entrancing as she watched the lady introduced to them as Miss Cormier move as one with the rich wood of her instrument, the bow an extension of her own arm. Cosima’s mouthpiece and copper-coloured horn left her lips and settled half-forgotten on her lap as she began to move to the soaring phrases in the cellist’s every bow stroke. 

Her own eyes avert themselves as her cheeks flush when she is caught staring. The cellist has realised that she was being watched and listened to, and has opened her freckled eyes to figure out who. Hurriedly Cosima raises her horn to her lips and plays the opening strains of the theme in Till Eulenspiegel, before she sheepishly realises as her section mates give her a quizzical look that she is playing a part meant for solo first horn, and that she is playing the D Clarinet melody instead. She spies the cellist’s graceful hands still on her fingerboard after a tremulous strain of vibrato, and she continues to warm up with chorales. No embarrassing herself with music she has been playing since she first picked up a single horn as a child. Her trusty double does not disappoint, and she sees something akin to admiration in the cellist’s hazel eyes before they both return to their music, notes weaving between and around each other in a strange twist of fate. 

Over the strains of the entire orchestra warming up for the practice that would begin once their conductor walked into the rehearsal hall, she heard the familiar jaunt of the witty solo horn line of Till, but with the timbre characteristic to a certain bowed instrument that she recognised. Cosima grinned inwardly, and flipped her folder of music open to the piece they would be rehearsing for the first portion of rehearsal. Turning to the other three hornists present at rehearsal, she motioned for them to begin their practice of playing the few bars of horn quartet in the music, her fourth horn part bending and yielding as it had to and soaring where it saw fit. 

It would be a good rehearsal. 

Without a doubt, Cosima thought, as she removed the slides of her instrument one by one to empty them before sliding them back in and placing her horn back into its case, that had been one of the best rehearsals they had had so far. The pieces were coming together, with the right blend of lower strings finally achieved with the addition of a new cellist. She could almost believe that she had played well that day as well, that her little low horn solo in Beethoven’s Ninth had not been too disappointing and anticlimactic. There had to be a better way of carrying out that conversation with the woodwinds. 

She went red just thinking about it, pushing her heavy black spectacles back up her nose bridge. Carrying her horn case in her right hand, she swung her messenger bag over her shoulder and lifted her mouthpiece to her lips. It had been practice for her, since she had gotten this mouthpiece when she turned sixteen, to always buzz the measures that she had had most difficulty with during that rehearsal on the way home from the rehearsal hall. 

On her way out of the hall she passed a pair of freckled hazel eyes, and a smile snuck onto her face. She could have sworn she saw a grin on the pink lips below those unbespectacled eyes as well. It struck her that she had never heard the cellist speak except the soft mention of her name and what she played when she first arrived. Even then, she knew that she had an accent almost as beautiful as the cello she played. French, Cosima thought, like her horn. Sometimes she made herself laugh; other times she tried. 

The boys were laughing, she heard, as they walked alongside her. They had noticed when she had played the complete wrong melody warming up, and that she had been distracted. Knowing the hornists, she would have no peace for the next few weeks. Instead of taking some time to speak with them as she sometimes did, she chose to keep buzzing and striding swiftly toward the university dorms that she lived at while she was completing the last bit of her studies. In a month and eleven days she would be Doctor Niehaus. In eleven minutes she would be back in her dorm, a student rather than a hornist once again. 

There had been something about the day’s rehearsal that stuck with her even through lectures and her labs, melodies weaving their way through her mind, entwining themselves with Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection, epigenetics and the like. Her roommate Elizabeth, an oboist, had murmured something about not missing the seven thirty a.m. orchestra rehearsals when Cosima had stepped through the door of their shared dorm room that morning, right before lessons started. Elizabeth was taking the year off orchestra to finish her criminal law degree, while Cosima stuck with it no matter what. She sure didn’t regret that now. Somehow, Cosima was always late for everything, but always early for rehearsal. For the rest of the day, that morning’s rehearsal had stuck in her mind, creating the most surreal experience she had had in her years separating the two parts of her so distinctly. 

There was hornist Cosima, dedicated and disciplined, always on time and never forgetting anything. Then there was Cosima elsewhere, a student and a young adult, boisterous, strange and messy. Somehow she was both a hornist and a student during the course of that day, and it struck her. Maybe, just maybe, the two could coexist without her having to separate them so wilfully. 

She simply couldn’t for the life of her figure out what had changed that day.


	2. Overture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still a little unsure of how to go about doing this, so sorry. Hence the shorter chapters. I'll do my best to get them to be more substantial should any of you wish me to. Hope you'll enjoy this chapter!

Her _maman_ had told her, when she first picked up the cello, that she could only ever go so far in music. Her _pere_ warned her that she had to have a sensible backup plan in life, something to fall back on if she simply was not good enough for the world of classical music. Her parents had also told her she would never leave her hometown and yet here she was, miles away from their “quaint” little French home, bow and cello in hand after rehearsal with her new orchestra. 

 

Of course, young Delphine Cormier had done everything in her limited power to gain her parents’ approval. For the sake of satisfying their unsupportive blasé attitude towards her illustrious music career, she threw herself into her schoolwork with the same amount of fervour, skipping a grade and entering university a year before the peers of her age group. Not a great head start, but enough for her to complete her doctorate in Immunology (to be a doctor, just in case the music did not work out in the end) without the distractions of the few friends she had managed to mete out of the throng of students in her original year. Enough for her to have done all she could to satisfy them, but still disappoint them by crossing oceans and countries to join a Philharmonic Orchestra so far away from what they had imagined as her future. Dr. and Mrs. Pierre Cormier had planned every minute of their eldest child’s life out from the moment she had been a feasible idea, and the neurosurgeon and his lecturer wife were not particularly pleased at where she had ended up. 

 

Somehow, Jacques playing the piano was alright, and they were even proud of Jean-Pierre being a cellist. One who had been taught by Delphine herself. 

 

The morning she had gotten off her flight from _Aéroport de Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle_ and collected her cello from the baggage carousel with it’s garish scarlet **fragile** sticker on the hard case the colour of ocean foam, she had headed directly to the rehearsal hall where she would be auditioned once more. They had already heard her play once, through a Skype call that she had discretely, but not secretly, set up in what had been her bedroom in her parents’ home. This audition, they remarked, was but a formality. In the satchel she carried was the letter of recommendation that her previous conductor had written for her, and that was the true golden ticket in this quest for a new sound. With his vote of confidence, there was almost no way a director would not welcome her into their ensemble. 

 

Her case and satchel had been deposited by her feet, before she rose from the seat she had unsurely taken to speak with the registrar. The woman was tanned, though her pale complexion shone through the sun-scorched skin. Swiftly completing the dutch braid that she was weaving through her highlighted hair, she smiled wryly at Delphine and asked for identification. After a blur of administrative work, Delphine picked up her case and satchel, flipping the bag shut and clasping it. Hurrying to her audition she rosined her bow and went through the motions of warming up before she was called into the room. They astonishingly had not wanted to hear any purely technical displays, but simply told her to play the piece she had prepared. Mozart’s Concerto No. 2 in Eb, for French Horn. They had called her unique, and unpredictable, and they had said that they liked it,  but without a recommendation they would have to take a few days to officially decide. 

 

Only then did she realise that something was missing. In the manila folder that she had handed to them, there had only been music. The score that she had memorised was carefully kept in the folder with what she though had been the letter. How could she have forgotten that letter?

 

It was then that the door enclosing the soundproof half-sized studio rehearsal room was unceremoniously opened by what she could only see as a head full of neat disorderly dreadlocks gathered into a ponytail of sorts. The person who burst into the room immediately bowed her head slightly, embarrassed, before beginning to ramble about how the paper she had found had been left on the floor outside the audition venue, at the receptionist’s, and that she had picked it up with the intention of recycling it but had realised that it was indeed quite important. With that, Delphine had been saved. 

 

When Delphine exited the room, she was Miss Delphine Cormier, newly minted member of the Dyad Philharmonic Orchestra. The woman from before, the one who had helped her out, she bounded up to Delphine and stuck out her hand, before awkwardly retracting it when it dawned on her that Delphine was unable to shake a hand with her cello, bow and music in both hands. She grinned a toothy, pointed smile and welcomed Delphine as their newest member. 

“ _Enchantée.”_ Delphine murmured. 

 

In her own accent, she attempted the best _enchantée_ she could manage. 

 

“Delphine, cellist.”

 

“Cosima, hornist.” The woman chuckled throatily, remarking that Delphine would have plenty of fun in the orchestra, reassuring her that the cellists were fantastic and weren’t so bad as people, either. 

 

In a flurry of motion and voices Delphine had heard several introductions of the members of the cello section. Off the top of her head, she could only recall that there was Aldous, the principal with a balding head and imposing lanky frame, Marian the co-principal who had been playing longer than Delphine had been aware of what a cello was, and Leda. 

 

She had warmed up for rehearsal with Bach, and she was well aware of the hornist from the audition room listening intently as she played. For once, she made it through the entire piece without a single mistake. Guess she did have someone to impress now, and she had finally managed to impress someone. 

 

Delphine decided that she was going to like it here. 


	3. Anacrusis

Marian’s lips curled into an enigmatic smile as she watched the new cellist and the fourth horn player - _Cosima, was it_ \- duet despite the distance and musicians that separated them in the rehearsal hall. They reminded her of the past, she realised, a past that she had had to give up the moment they took Charlotte into their home. But the two were young, brilliant and amazingly talented. They had their entire futures ahead of them. She had heard Cosima play right when she first joined their philharmonic and she had only improved tremendously since then. This new girl, Delphine, she had the makings of a phenomenal cellist and Marian could not help but wonder why someone like her - tall, slim, blonde and obviously cultured - had not chosen to pursue an instrument with more so-called prestige. Most girls like her chose the violin for that reason, for the chance to be a principal or a concert master, as Rachel Duncan had wanted to do. Marian hardly liked many of the people who entered the orchestra; some of them were never serious enough about the music to stay very long, and those who did sometimes just didn’t fit with the other musicians. 

 

She remembered how, when she had been younger and more hotheaded, Ethan Duncan had requested for her specifically to take on the daunting task of educating his only daughter in the art of the cello. He had been their chief conductor, at the time, and it would have been foolish to turn him down. Luckily, perhaps, for Marian, young Rachel Duncan with that same stubborn head on her slight squared shoulders had declared within the first ten minutes of her second cello lesson that she would not accept such a “dumpy” instrument, demanding for violin lessons instead. She had not been the only tutor turned away by the sweet but wilful young girl; Amelia had tried and failed to persuade her with the clarinet, while Angie had tried to win her over with the trumpet. By the time the maestro’s young charge had gotten round to rejecting the cello as well, Ethan had had no other choice but to yield to his daughter’s wishes. Violin it was.

 

The issue, here, was that there was no one left in the orchestra who had not heard of the menace that was ten year old Rachel Amadora Duncan, and none of the violinists were particularly willing to take her under their wing. 

 

* * *

 

Enter Siobhan Sadler. 

 

* * *

 

Fresh off the boat as an import from the Irish Chamber Orchestra, her almost gruff accent and overall slightly dishevelled demeanour was one that Marian and the other members of the Dyad had not much seen before. Even Rachel didn’t quite know how to throw this newcomer off, and soon she was unabashedly pecked down to size and taught the viola with the provision that she would learn the violin when she got older and a little more sensible, since that was what she wanted the most. Their first meeting, Siobhan’s and Marian’s, that is, had been much like Cosima’s and Delphine’s, in that Siobhan had left her referral letter of recommendation outside the audition room, having dropped it while she had been putting the rosin on her bow. Marian knocked with trepidation and yet strode in confidently to pass it to the maestro, and they had first spoken when the violist had exited the audition room. 

 

As Rachel had grown and her hair had gone from a mousy brown ponytail to a blonde bob, Siobhan had gone from a newcomer, to principal, then leaving the orchestra. She had to take care of Charlotte, the little girl they had taken in and adopted, smuggled into the country by someone from Siobhan’s past, and they needed to support the child on more than the salaries of two musicians. Rachel had taken over as the new principal violist, long since having come to terms with how she liked viola more than the supposed prestige of the violin. Siobhan Sadler did not yield to anyone, least of all an obstinate child like Rachel Duncan. 

 

As Marian sat in her second chair spot, she let go of some of her bitterness towards Aldous who sat in the chair next to her. In front of her. Simply because he had remarked to Duncan that she had been the reason why they had lost their principal violist. Getting up, she motioned for Delphine to take her chair. She would play second (or third) fiddle to this new girl if it meant her going as far as Marian never learnt how to go. This girl would be her protege, yes. With the right pushes and good grooming in the Dyad she would surpass Aldous in a matter of months, and perhaps this would even give that hornist a better vantage point. 

 

She wanted to see where this would go: the alternative biologist-hornist and the French cellist. It was almost as absurd as they had been. There was a tender sore fondness in the memories of playing with her political activist, that violist who always had her head up in the clouds and herself all up in arms about something or the other at some point in time, while Marian, who had grown up in all the prestige and oblivion that upper class pampering had afforded her, had had very little idea of what the young woman had been so involved in. She only knew that no matter what sort of rioting and protesting Siobhan got up to on their off days from the Dyad and tutoring, she was safe in her arms and whatever scrapes, cuts and bruises that she would end up with would be patched up at the end of the day. At least their situation was less absurd than that. From what little she knew about the hornist, her family was middle class, but loving. Delphine had remarked that her parents did not approve of her playing cello, let alone in a place so far away from home and indefinitely at that. It would be beautiful to see it blossom, if it worked out. The last thing she wanted for them was for it to create dissonance in their music, for any form of conflict to mar their perfectly intoned harmonies. 

 

Delphine gazed quizzically at Marian for a brief moment when she finally took her eyes off the dreadlocks seated too far away. She had not expected that smile, nor had she expected the woman to allow her to take second chair on her first day at the Dyad. They warmed up in tandem, the same strings being bowed and plucked with similar accuracy but different styles; the same fervour but differing seasonality. Marian showed her the score for the piece they would be rehearsing, pointing out the four bars in which the cello part she played would move simultaneously with but contrary to the fourth horn line. She would learn all she could, Marian could see. That girl had more than just heart for the music now; she was invested. 


	4. Ostinato

Delphine had been grinning like an idiot since she had left rehearsal that morning. She and Cosima had fallen into a rhythm of sorts, both arriving just early enough that there were few people there, and not so much that it seemed sketchy and strange. They always left within minutes of one another, unwittingly, they both thought, just far enough apart that they thought no one would notice anything amiss, and close enough that they would accidentally bump into each other on the way out of the rehearsal hall. The hornist had been absent for a singular rehearsal session earlier in the week, and that had been strange to say the least. Delphine had grown used to her presence on the other side of the room. It was distant enough that it was not too distracting, but noticeable enough in the way that her being there balanced the room out. Needless to say, Marian had had to nudge Delphine more than once with the butt of her bow during that practice session. Cosima was back, at least, and from the note that had been scrawled on the coffee cup that she had been handed subtly as the dreadlocked girl had passed her that morning, she was deeply apologetic for not having informed Delphine about her absence in advance. 

 

They still had not spoken much to each other, only passing greetings of _bonjour_ , good morning, and the occasional smirking farewell. There had been notes, yellow post-its that Marian had pretended not to notice as they appeared on her stand, and green ones that she had written in return with the pencil that always sat on her stand for rehearsals. Marian had said nothing about that either, only peering at her over her own scores and quirking her lips into a knowing smile. She said nothing at all. 

 

When she had gotten to her seat (after Cosima, somehow), there was already a note on it. Lately the post-its had begun to revolve more around getting to know each other. Cosima had asked about her family; her _maman_ and _pere,_ Jacques and Jean-Pierre. She had asked her about her life outside the music, about how she liked the new country and how she had been so far. Delphine had asked about her schooling, knowing that the girl studied nearby and nothing else. The note today had shed some light on that, actually, with the remark that she was now Cosima Niehaus, Phd. That girl took her breath away, and it was a good thing that she played a string instrument rather than a wind one. She would not be able to keep her tone steady if she had to rely on her lungs to not give out while Cosima was nearby. Before she flipped her folder of music open, she had finally peeled her eyes away from the characteristic handwriting on the post-it that was just so **Cosima**. It was only then that she jumped slightly with the realisation that Aldous was seated down next to her, without his cello and closer than usual. His thin lips twisted into a smile and he put his large hand that had danced across the fingerboard of his instrument without a single moment of hesitation on her leg, covering a sizeable portion of the area above her knee. 

 

“Y-yes, Aldous?” Inwardly, Delphine cursed herself for allowing her voice to waver, “Is there something I can ‘elp you with?” There it was again, her habit of swallowing letters and adding them where they were not due when she got nervous. She had not had that problem since she had come here, not since she had met Cosima on the first day. 

 

His hand had begun to burn an uncomfortable print into her leg through the fabric of her slacks, and her cheeks had started to burn similarly. 

 

“Well, Miss Cormier, you are a talented young cellist, no doubt, but I do hope you know what you’d have to do to get real far in this business.”   


His voice made chills run laps up and down her spine like the nerve impulses were trying to complete some sort of godforsaken beep test. Her teeth sank into her lower lip subconsciously in a concerted effort not to let tears pour down her face in her panic. She suppressed her instinctual urge to squirm away from his touch and in her head all she repeated was some form of mantra for someone, _anyone,_ to appear and save her from this situation. 

 

He only got closer from there, and his hand began to inch higher. She tried to use her cello to keep his hand from advancing further, but it helped as much as her tensing up did. Her eyes were clenched shut, her shoulders quaking as she tried to contain the panic that was threatening to bubble to the surface. 

 

* * *

 

“Get your paws off her, Leekie, before I get Maestro over here and,” the voice did not even need to finish the sentence before Delphine heard the sharp hiss of angered breath being sucked through his clenched teeth. His hand tightened its grip on her leg and she twitched in pain momentarily. 

 

“And who, Miss Niehaus, might you be to be telling me this?”

 

“Her girlfriend, you lecher, now unhand her before I get Maestro Duncan and tell him what you were doing. We’ll see if Marian Bowles finally gets the principal chair she deserves, eh?”

 

_Cosima_. Thank goodness. 

 

* * *

 

Immediately Cosima seized the moment of Leekie’s being angered into stillness to pull Delphine (and her cello) from his grasp. Her arms (surprisingly lithe and wiry as they were) wrapped protectively around the taller girl as she continued to glare poisonously at the bald man whose chair was too evidently too close to the second chair for any form of comfort. Moving one hand just slightly higher than the small of Delphine’s back and grasping her cello carefully in the other, she led the shaken girl over to the corner of the seating positions where the fourth horn player was corralled. The singular other horn player who had already arrived wisely scooted off elsewhere, probably to the door where he could stop the rest of the boys from entering. She guided Delphine into her seat and set the instrument gently on the carpeted ground. 

 

“I’m sorry, Delphine, I-I just didn’t know what else to say and he was so creepy and I’ve seen him do this before and, holy watershed, I just couldn’t let him do to you what I’ve seen him do to the others before you before and there’s a reason why there’s always been a cello lacking and I’m just so sorry don’t hate me please.” Her hand flailed wildly in front of her face as she attempted to reason herself incoherently out of the corner she seemed to have forced herself into. 

 

Somehow, a small grin came over Delphine’s face, replacing the horror that Leekie had placed there. Cosima had cared enough to step in and save her. Cosima had called her her _girlfriend_. Even if it wasn’t real it felt good to have someone like Cosima help her out in that sort of situation. 

 

* * *

 

“Did it mean anything, to you?”

 

“Did what?”

 

“What you said. Sometimes, I was told, Americans say things they do not mean to get what they want.”

 

“I do like you, Delphine, if that’s what you’re asking,” her hands had begun to run wild again, and Delphine grasped them in her own. 

 

“Then we can try this? Make this lie, not-a-lie?”

 

Cosima looked down at their joined hands, her glasses slipping down the bridge of her nose. Releasing one of her hands, Delphine pushed the glassed back up and tucked one of Cosima’s dreadlocks back behind her ear.

 

“I am quite sure, Cosima, if you are.”

 

“Alright, then. Shit this was unexpected. Not a bad kind of unexpected-don’t get me wrong, it’s the best kind possible-but unexpected all the same.”

 

For a moment Cosima went quiet, before she spoke again, slightly more affirmed this time.

 

“I’m still going to report him, if that’s alright with you.” She took in a short breath, shallow and high, “he’s done this to more new female cellists than he should have ever gotten the chance to, and it really cannot go on much longer. It isn’t safe.”

 

Softly, Delphine muttered her affirmation, nodding into the shoulder she was leaning on. 

 

The two had been seated there just grinning at each other like weirdos, hand in hand, until the boys had burst back in and quietly wolf whistled. Cosima had bawdily barked back at them, and soon after, Delphine saw Marian approaching her. 

 

“He’s on suspension. I’m so sorry, Delphine, I should have been there. I should never have put you in that seat. You should never have been put in that position.”

 

“It is alright, Marian, you have done more for me than you had to, and at least something good came out of this.” Her eyes twinkled at Cosima, and she rose gracefully, grasping her cello, “Let’s get back to rehearsal, yes? And let the horn boys have their chairs.”

 

Yes, Delphine had been grinning since then, even in spite of the entire deal with Leekie. She could have sworn she saw Marian legitimately grin out of the corner of her eye sometime during their rehearsal of Jupiter: the Bringer of Jollity, and once again she found herself drawn to the horns and the lower harmonies. She did not want to dwell on what could have been. It did not matter now, especially since she knew Cosima would lay her life on the line for her safety. She had nothing to fear, and Leekie only had everything to. The best thing about this entire ordeal was the fact that the new occupant of the principal chair was Marian, and the woman truly showed what prowess she had been keeping under wraps as second chair all this while. There was no longer mystique and amazement in her memories of Aldous Leekie's playing, only a cross between despising him and overwhelming nausea. 

 

* * *

 

As she left rehearsal that day, Marian picked up her cellphone as it began to ring. Her daughter, she knew from the ringtone: Mozart's Oboe Concerto in C. There were days she would have let it ring a little longer, enjoy the music before she would speak to the girl, but today there was big news, news that her daughter had been pressing her about already. Getting into her car whilst she spoke, she prepared to pick up Siobhan from home, then Charlotte from her school. There was so much to tell them, and she knew Siobhan would be touched, no matter how much she tried to deny it. 

 


	5. Reprise

Elizabeth was genuinely happy for her roommate when she had heard the news from her mother. It was times like this that she really did miss early morning rehearsals and orchestra gossip. Her oboe sat in the corner of their shared room, its case collecting dust and mourning the sedentary lifestyle it had been living for the past year or so. She could not bring herself to play anymore, not since Allie had gone. Getting up from her perch on her study desk’s matching chair, she stumbled over her own feet and her criminology notes on the way towards her past in a case. Silently Elizabeth sat on the uncarpeted ground, unzipping the case and running her fingers over the black and silver instrument softly. She put it together with practiced ease and rusted wariness, feeling the cracks in her lips once the reed that had been soaked was placed between them. The phalanges of her hands shifted and creaked beneath her skin as she ran them up and down quietly in an unplayed scale. 

She could not seem to operate as she used to. In the instrument she heard promises that should never have been promised before she even began playing. The chain of the door slid open with a rattle, and she did not look up nor move from her place as she knew it was only Cosima returning from rehearsal before they had to leave for their respective morning classes. The dreadlocked girl set her horn case on the ground and placed her mouthpiece in its pouch. 

“Well, haven’t seen that old thing in a while.” Cosima’s voice was wary, but bright with the overspill of that morning all the same. 

“Allie loved it; it never felt right to play once she was gone.” Beth smiled around her reed, her words unclear but their intentions plenty so, “My mother called today, she told me about the new cellist. You seem happy, Cos. It’s good for you.”

“Did she also happen to tell you about my heroics, though?”

“Maybe she did, what is it to you, Niehaus?” Setting her oboe carefully down on her lap, she extracted the reed from its place in the instrument and returned it to its case, “Maybe she mentioned that you two reminded her of her and Ma.”

Cosima strode over to the record player, the one that Beth had hauled over from her own bedroom in her home. Selecting one of Beth’s newer records, she set it on the player and allowed the brief static, then the warm music, to fill the room softly. Grabbing her horn case from its place near the door, she set herself next to Elizabeth on the ground.

“Come on, Childs, let’s play something. It’s been way too long for you, and S would murder me if I let you go any longer in your repressed music-less state.”

With the silence filled, she put her reed back on the instrument, putting it between her lips and gingerly pushing some air through. The first tentative notes bubbled out of her instrument for the first time in a year, and before tears could overwhelm her resolve, Cosima joined in on the same basic lip slur warm ups they had first learnt together in their honour band years ago. Allie was gone, and as much as she might detest the very essence of Donnie Hendrix’s lack of a soul, Alison had chosen him. The least she could do was to reclaim her music. Nothing was sexual with Elizabeth, but she had loved Alison for everything else, and that was plenty enough for them. Now, as that had ended, she could redeem her music again. 

It wasn’t much, just a warm up and a few short Bach chorales that they could still remember off the tops of their heads. After they had packed up and cleaned their instruments, both their phones began to ring, and while Cosima blushed (and Beth humiliated her over the phone to Delphine), Beth picked up a call that immediately came through with a combination of a chipper childish voice and a thick, low Scottish brogue. 

“Hey Ma, what’ s going on? I just got a call from Mom just now.”

“Mommy’s the new principal, Bethy!” Charlotte’s voice broke through before Siobhan’s could, and Beth couldn’t help but crack a grin at her little sister’s excitement.

“Well, maybe you can tell Ma that Cos finally got me to play my oboe again, Lotte, and tell Mom that she probably should start playing again before she gets left out.” Hopefully her sister and mother couldn’t hear the near-tears in her voice, and that they could only hear the happiness that came with it, “How are the trumpet lessons going, kid?”

“Helena teaches great! Kira and I really like her because she’s like a kid too. I hear Gemma and Oscar complain all the time in school about how Mr Bell is stodgy and how Miss Obinger is hard to understand. We’re real lucky, Bethy.”

“I’m not sure who drives your mother up the wall more, Elizabeth - Kira, Char or Helena.” She let out a throaty chuckle over the phone, “But she’s right: Marion’s the new principal cellist. Maestro is asking for you back, again, if you’ll have them. Think it over, okay kiddo?”

With that, they hung up, and Beth picked up her things to head to class. Once Charlotte was old enough, and good enough, she was sure her entire family would be roped into playing for the Dyad. Perhaps she would think about joining up again. There really was nothing stopping her if she could only start playing again; what bullshit her reasoning to the orchestra had been, and everyone knew it. She could finally get her life back in order. 

Her Ma was proof enough that music had to be part of their lives, and that no matter how fulfilling her life otherwise was, she could not, and would not, live without the music if she had a choice.


	6. Coda

There was a time after she had decided to leave the Philharmonic that Siobhan Sadler couldn’t bear to even look at music or touch her instrument. As per usual, as if nothing had changed, strains of harmony and cadences still burst into light in her mind, without paying any heed to the fact that they never would escape and be played to an audience. Cradling the dark-haired child in her arms who seemed all the more pale in contrast to her thick hair, she never regretted it - well, maybe she did; saying she hadn’t ever thought twice about returning would have been a lie - or at least she understood why she did it. She couldn’t blame Charlotte - who could? It wasn’t any fault of the youngling that she had a bad leg, or that she needed more help before she could stand on her own. They’d already been through the matter of depression with their eldest, and really, it was no different save the fact that Charlotte was so much younger. Marian had taken to spending the first hour she was home after rehearsals away from her, as if the music and the memories could somehow diffuse from her to Siobhan. It was strange on both ends, to say the least, and it had been so strained for a while that she really began to question if it was all worth it. 

 

The door shut, downstairs, the panelling chiming her in with its familiar rattling of loose hinges. _She needed to get that fixed soon, before it fell on Charlotte_. Sharp, quick footsteps scattered up the staircase, and instantly she shot upright. Those were too crisp, too neat, too _even_ to be Charlotte. The door to the bedroom opened just a crack, and with her back turned, folding linens to tuck into Elizabeth’s cupboard, Siobhan could not see who, or what, had entered. She felt hands ghost over her shoulders, drawing nearer before jerking away, finally coming down softly to rest on the warm, pressed flannel. 

 

“Marian.” Her name escaped her lips like a gust of air through a reed, “This, sweetie, is a first.”

 

“There’s no point in me avoiding you, not anymore. I asked Duncan. He said he could take you back if I left. Or you could always come back as a guest player. No strings, so to speak.” 

 

Turning, she faced Marian and enveloped the woman in her arms, holding her frame closer than she had in weeks. 

 

“The Phil is your home. You were there first. This is my home now; our home, Charlotte needs at least one of us here all the time, for now. I’ll be playing again soon enough, once she’s older and okay on her own. I’ll be just fine, Marian, just give me some time.”

 

They stood there for a while, just holding each other, letting the music in the silence of the room surround them. This was their home now. 

 

Siobhan picked up her viola again three months to the day that she left the Dyad Philharmonic for good. The bow was dry and smooth from the distinct lack of rosin, and the strings were slackened from disuse. Charlotte sat on a chair next to her as she deposited herself on the hardwood floor next to her instrument case, observing Siobhan as she first rubbed her bow thoroughly with a coat of rosin and then proceeded to tune her strings. The first stroke that she made, a downward bow, cracked the stillness that had settled over her features and the viola. It had been too long, too long without her old friend. In raptures, Charlotte beamed a toothy gap-filled grin as she tilted her head slightly to the left - a mannerism she learnt from Beth, no doubt - as the notes on each string came together once more. 

 

Start simple, she told herself. Don’t expect the same sound to come out of those strings as they used to. She played this melody they used to sing in school, a folk song, the Lorelei. Then Charlotte reached her pudgy, small hand over and brushed over the strings with a mixture of wonder and clumsiness, and Siobhan broke from her reserved bonds and started playing with the feeling she used to play with. Out poured Ravel and Mozart and everything from Rachmaninoff to a by-ear transcription of Coltrane. 

 

And that was where it all started. Coltrane on a rusty viola without any audience save the two and a half year old who sat on a wooden chair. That was where music began to fill the house again, old vinyls taking their place on the spinning stage once more, with the child exposed to all the music that her older sister had been. 

 

Charlotte went with her to the music store one day to pick up a set of scores for Elizabeth, a trio piece that she had special ordered that had just come in. Siobhan let her wander a little, warning her not venture out of the store. When she had collected the thick stack of cream stationery that she had come to associate with nothing but music, Siobhan strolled around the displays of scores and instruments looking for a certain dark-haired child. She found her sitting in front of a glass case, her finger ghosting against the surface, tracing every key and spring that could be found on the instrument before her, enthralled by this new shape she had not seen before. If anything, it looked like Charlotte had found her calling, and it all went right back to the Coltrane she had played. 

 

She didn’t need to be in the hall of the philharmonic to know what went on, and she heard everything she had to from Marian. She heard everything at home as well, listening to their own chamber group grow with both the girls. 

 

There was a time, after she had come to terms with everything, that Siobhan Sadler would have, without a sliver of a doubt, told anyone that it was worth it. It was worth everything. 

 

-

 

_Was it worth it?_  

 

That was the biggest question in Delphine’s mind. The photograph she had of her parents and her brothers, it had been delicately stuffed to the back of the bottom drawer in her closet, hidden away from where it could eat away at her. Sure, she was happier; sure, she had found music; sure, she had found love, but was it worth losing her family over, that was the question. 

 

She wished she could have said that music and love conquered all, and that it didn’t hurt her one single bit because she had all that mattered around her in this new land, but that would have been a lie. 

 

Were dreadlocks, glasses, horns and cellos worth losing her home and heart of the past twenty-odd years? Delphine only wished she had an answer, yet she didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to have to regret leaving to chase her dreams, or to forget that her home had ever existed to her in the first place. What Cosima chided, though, was her adamance over her inability to reconcile the two and have _both_. How could she? Understanding the music was something that her parents never were willing to do for her, and she could not bear to do it for herself. She felt their disappointment radiate through any and all interaction she had with her brothers, and she felt a certain sense of guilt. It was as it the - what was the word - onus was on her to make sure that she made them proud so that the responsibility was not on her younger brothers. She had failed. 

 

Consciously she felt the neck of her cello in the crook of her hand, where her thumb sought to meet her palm, and she cradled it. It was her precious lifeline, her one way to her dreams. There were other things at stake, she had to admit, things that were more than her music at times, way too loud and jarring for her taste. 

 

That was what she had to figure out, with Cosima, hopefully. Was it all worth it in the end? 


End file.
